Environmental Problems in Australia

(Left. MacquarieIsland before the removal of cats. Right, after the removal.)

“Our findings show that it’s important for scientists to study the whole ecosystem before doing eradication programs...There haven’t been a lot of programs that take the entire system into account. You need to go into scenario mode: ‘If we kill this animal, what other consequences are there going to be?" Arko Lucieer, University of Tasmania, after the removal of cats caused a population explosion of rabbits and rats on Macquarie Island.

In many ways, environmentalism has become the uniting moral code of the 21st century. Because no one wants to eat polluted food, breath polluted air, swim amongst plastic bags and see unique animals eradicated from the earth, protecting the environment has become one of the few causes that a morally diverse world can agree is important. Unfortunately, what constitutes environmental protection has been corrupted by ideological mantras.

In Australia, the most salient feature of contemporary environmental management is its focus on destruction as a conservation technique. Bushfires, guns, viruses, poisons, and genetic engineering are used to try to make the ecosystem like it was in 1788. The ideology is typified in the view that "a healthy landscape is a landscape that includes people as active land managers." (1) It is also seen in the words of left-wing biologist Tim Low, who argued that Australia will only be a mature nation when killing native animals is accepted as a worthy conservation strategy. In his own words:

"Our challenge today is to become more ecologically astute, to recognise that native species can be pests too, that will sometimes need controlling (killing). Australia will have matured as a nation when we can calmly debate the merits of shooting koalas, for conservation's sake."

Low's ideology is quite typical of farming based cultures. In all communities that have  farming as an economic base, the natural world is seen as a world to be controlled by humans. This is in stark contrast to hunter gatherer communities that have a more egalitarian approach to nature, in which humans are a part of the ecosystem, not masters over it. Such views were seen in the worlds of an Aborigine named Tom Dystra, who wrote,

"We cultivated our land, but in a way different from the white man. We endeavoured to live with the land; they seemed to live off it. "

Of course, masters always need to make decisions about exactly what they are hoping to achieve with their management policies and this is where the exact definition of environmental protection becomes important. In Australia, many environmentalist see environmental protection as actions that recreate pre-1788 ecosystems that have yet to be corrupted by humanity. Some of the thinking can be seen in the words of Dr A. J. Brown, from Griffith Law School:

"Today, for environment groups and land management agencies, wilderness is a land use classification which relates specifically to growing respect for the non-commercial, non-industrial, non-colonial values of those landscapes that have been least disturbed since 1788. Most recently, the Commonwealth Government discussion paper on wilderness protection defined a wilderness as:
"... an area that is, or can be restored to be, a sufficient size to enable the long-term protection of its natural systems and biological diversity; substantially undisturbed by colonial and modern technological society; and remote at its core from points of mechanised access and other evidence of colonial and modern technological society. " (2)

In many respects, it is an ideology of self-denial.  An ecosystem that has landcare managers getting paid to cull native animals, and reduce numbers of ferals, all while pretending they are not interfering in the ecosystem, is nothing like a pre-1788 ecosystem.

Aside from being dubious on environmental grounds, the views of Dr Brown are quite dubious on racial grounds. It is a view that defines pre-1788 Aborigines as animals that were part of the ecosystem, rather than humans that shaped the ecosystem into what it was in 1788. The same ideology resulted in past Australian governments categorising Aborigines as fauna and flora to be protected like a kangaroo or koala today. Again, it can be seen as a legacy of a farming approach to the natural world that sees humans (Aborigines excluded) as masters that need to dominate and control.

Ironically, the human-is-master ideology management techniques are revealing that humans do not have as much power as they would like to believe. The more that environmentalists try to control the ecosystem, the more the ecosystem shows how difficult it is to control. This is particularly the case with policies designed to eliminate ferals, but which have merely resulted in ferals moving toward complete dominance. The problem is that whenever a species is rapidly killed off, the whole ecosystem is pushed into shock and suffers voids. Fast breeding animals, which are usually the introduced species, are then best placed to fill those voids. For example, when rabbit numbers are rapidly reduced by the human introduced myxomatosis virus, warren ripping or poisons, the loss of food forces foxes and cats to target the harder-to-catch marsupials. Because the rapid removal of rabbits causes the prey-predator ratio to be massively out of balance, the marsupials don’t stand much chance of striking a new balance with the starving foxes and cats. Once the marsupials have been hunted to extinction, cat and fox numbers fall. Fast breeding rabbits then re-enter an ecosystem that has less predators and less competitors than the one they were eliminated from. In a nutshell, keeping an ecosystem in a state of chaos helps fast breeding ferals that can fill voids quickly.

As a direct consequence of modern conservation strategy, Australia has 1750 species now on the threatened list. Australia suffers from desertification to almost 42 per cent of its land, and it has 59 of its mammals at risk of immediate extinction. Furthermore, it is the only continent with cats spread completely across it, and is the only continent that has the fox near the apex of the food chain. At the 136 sites across northern Australia that have been repeatedly surveyed since 2001, the mammal populations have dropped by an average of 75 per cent. The number of sites classified as ''empty'' of mammal activity rose from 13 per cent in 1996 to 55 per cent in 2009.

In what should be seen as an humbling outcome, the attempt by humans to eradicate rabbits, foxes and cats has lead to an outcome in which rabbits, foxes and cats dominate. In short, controlling an ecosystem is difficult and it has been arrogant of environmentalists to think otherwise.

Case studies - Culling on Kangaroo Island.

The failed management of koala populations on Kangaroo Island is a good example of how an ideological desire to control nature has overridden pragmatic solutions that would facilitate the ecosystem engaging in some self-corrections. Kangaroo Island is a 4,405 km² island off the coast of South Australia. It had been free of humans and koalas for over 2,000 years. In the 1920s, 18 koalas were introduced to the island in case they went extinct on the mainland. The relocation worked so well that by the 1990s ecologists decided that the koalas had reached plague proportions and were eating gum trees to extinction. Some scientists proposed that the best solution would be to get government funding to relocate, cull and sterilise some of the koalas. Presumably, they wanted to be funded to manage the koalas in this way forever. At $140 per Koala, it was quite a lucrative "solution".

In addition to wanting money to control koalas, they wanted money to run "public re-education" campaigns. In other words, they wanted money to run campaigns building community support for more government funding. They got $5,000,000 before the South Australian government finally wised up and ceased their funding.

Natural Resources Committee wants to cull KI koalas
GREG KELTON

Koala Management –
Saving Kangaroo Island’s threatened eucalypt habitats
MEDIA RELEASE

More recently, Dr Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics standing for the Australian Greens, has proposed that hunting safaris can be organised so that wealthy tourists can come and shoot koalas.  In his own words:

“One approach worthy of serious consideration would be to charge a fee for visitors to Kangaroo Island to hunt koalas. In this way, we could enhance koala conservation while also providing a worthwhile tourist experience that would help us break into the lucrative American market. Of course, the operation would need to be properly managed by reputable people. Professionals would closely supervise hunters as they track, spot, shoot and bag the animals. As in African big-game safaris, koala hunters would need to demonstrate that they are good shots so that there is a high probability that they will achieve a clean head-shot on a koala that may be 30 metres up in a tree.

For inexperienced hunters and children learning to use guns, it may be feasible to capture some koalas and place them in enclosures so that hunters can shoot them at close range.” (3)

Admittedly, such a solution would bypass the need for the government to fund scientists, but it would still represent a solution that demands that humans play a central role in control. Furthermore,  a solution that encourages children to enjoy shooting immobile koalas sitting in a cage is really not really a solution that encourages environmental appreciation.

A far cheaper solution, and less invasive one, would have been to simply isolate valued gum trees and wrap aluminium guards around them to prevent koalas climbing up. In city areas, such guards are used to keep possums out of trees. Not only would the aluminium guards have protected a diverse range of gum trees, they could also have been specifically placed on those gum trees being used by vulnerable bird species. Admittedly, the aluminium guards would not have prevented thousands of koalas starving to death. However, the koalas that starved to death would have been the weakest of the species. They would be the ones that would not have been strong enough to fight for a gum tree. This would not have been a bad outcome. A natural rate of attrition is far superior to the indiscriminate slaughter, which can eliminate the strongest of the species and deny natural selection. Furthermore, almost all wild animals are destined to starve if they are not eaten by a predator. It is naive to cull an animal to protect it against the cruelty of life.

Aluminum guards around trees - A simple and cheap solution to a minor environmental problem.

A second solution would be to relocate tasmanian devils to the Island so they would do the culling for humans. Although the devil wouldn't be able to climb trees, it could pick off koalas that need to walk along the ground to get to a new tree. The devil could also humanely kill the starving koalas that fall out of the trees, so that tourists would not feel distressed by seeing the starving koalas. As for threatening other wildlife, because the devil is slow and cumbersome, it is more of a scavenger than a hunter. It primarily preys on dead or weakened animals. Healthy animals would not have been threatened.

Because aluminum guards and the relocation of tasmanian devils have the potential to make humans redundant, they seem to be resisted by environmentalists. An ecosystem that can take care of itself goes against their desire to control, and be paid for it.

Case study 2- Cities moving towards an environmental partnership

One of the great ironies of modern day environmentalism is that some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in Australia are in big cities. Native fauna and flora have benefited from gardens, from permanent water supplies and from not always having their ecosystems burnt. For example, platypuses live in stormwater drains and enjoy the worms washed out of gardens. Possums live in roofs and feed off compost heaps or fruit trees. Snakes live under houses and eat rodents that live on household scraps. Blue-tongue lizards live near dog kennels and steal dog food when the dog isn't looking. Birds nest in backyard trees. Wallabies live on golf courses and on sporting fields. Water rats, turtles, frogs and yabbies live aside golf course ponds. With the exception of culling kangaroos, city ecosystems do not need paid land care managers to kill pests or monitor habitat. There is sufficient biodiversity for the ecosystem to care for itself. Without trying to create a good ecosystem for native fauna, humans have created a good ecosystem for native fauna. It succeeds because humans are part of the ecosystem, not wardens trying to preserve it as a museum.

The removal of feral species from Macquarie Island is one of the best examples of the scientists believing that they can make surgical strikes into an ecosystem in order to cure disease, only to discover that things are not so simple. Cats, rabbits, and rodents were first introduced in the 1860s. Although the cats hunted some native birds, a new balance was formed in which all species were relatively assured of survival.

Almost a century later, the myxomatosis virus was introduced to eliminate rabbits. As rabbit numbers fell, cats turned to native birds. With each new myxomatosis outbreak, the ecosystem was pushed into chaos, with cat numbers exceeding available prey. Some native birds were then hunted to extinction by the starving cats.

To deal with the problem of cats, scientists asked for $500,000 to eliminate a feral population of around 500 cats. Meanwhile, rabbits were building up their immunity to myxomatosis. When the final cat was removed in 2000, rabbit numbers were between 4,000 and 20,000. Within 6 years, the population had reached 130,000. To make matters worse, the elimination of cats also led to population explosions of rats, which in turn ate the bird eggs and chicks.

Theoretically, it might be possible to fix the environmental disaster. In an attempt to do so, $25 million dollars has been allocated to reduce rat and rabbit numbers. The strategy will involve dropping up to 250 tonnes of poison baits then using dogs to hunt down the small percentage of rabbits that avoid eating it. Some sea birds will also eat the baits and their deaths are seen as collateral damage. It is a management policy that is only slightly below the napalming the island in the hope that the birds can migrate back in once everything else has been killed.

In all probability, the eradication attempts will fail. On other islands and in fenced off enclosures, scientists have previously tried to eliminate rabbits and rats, but failed. If they fail again, either the cat or another predator, such as the Quoll, will need to be introduced.

The same kind of small picture thinking seen on Macquarie Island has been plaguing mainland Australia for decades. When rabbits were first introduced, they caused serious problems. However, increased populations of goannas, foxes, cats, quolls, birds of prey, and dingoes soon brought rabbit numbers under control in bushland areas. Unfortunately, because there were few native predators on farmland, they caused havoc in crop production areas.

Potentially, quolls and goannas could have been kept as pets and co-existed with farmers very easily. In the process, they could have helped reduce rabbit numbers. Unfortunately, rather than encourage farmers to get some native pets, scientists introduced the myxomatosis virus. Although this led to rabbit populations crashing on farmland, it also caused a crash in wilderness areas as well. Rabbit predators then needed to find an alternative food source. Small marsupials, such as bilbies, were then hunted into extinction before the predators also saw their numbers decline as well.

Ironically, the elimination of rabbits followed by collapses in the population of predators replicated the situation in the late 19th century that rabbits found so appealing. When the myxomatosis immune rabbits re-entered the ecosystem a short time later, they found that there were relatively few predators. In a nutshell, trying to recreate a pre-1788 ecosystem merely resulted in rabbits once more migrating into an ecosystem not prepared for their presence. In other words, it stopped the ecosystem's natural process of adaptation.

Scientists were just so focussed on their desire to control that they were unable to see that every time a feral was eliminated, it pushed the ecosystem into a state of imbalance. This in turn benefited the fast breeding foreign species that could quickly fill environmental voids.

Irrespective of whether it is feral or native, an animal is part of an ecosystem. It can't simply be removed without directly and indirectly impacting upon hundreds of other components of the ecosystem. If it must be removed, then it must be removed slowly, and it must be done by tinkering with the ecosystem so that the feral loses its niche in it.

On the positive side, in the 21st century, Australia's scientists are now starting to acknowledge that something can't be removed from an ecosystem without other effects being felt. After the disaster on Mcquarie Island, Arko Lucieer, University of Tasmania, wrote:

“Our findings show that it’s important for scientists to study the whole ecosystem before doing eradication programs...There haven’t been a lot of programs that take the entire system into account. You need to go into scenario mode: ‘If we kill this animal, what other consequences are there going to be?"

It is just strange that what may seem like common sense was not understood by scientists until the 21st century.

 

Case Study 4 - Reintroducing native predators

Since European colonisation, mainland Australia has lost 18 marsupial species. Tasmania, however, has only lost one species of marsupial - the tasmanian tiger. The preservation of Tasmania's marsupials has been attributed to the tasmanian devil preventing foxes from ever being able to gain a foothold, and keeping the population of feral cats under control. The devil lived on mainland Australia until around 500 years ago. If it were re-introduced, it would keep populations of cats and foxes under control as it does in Tasmania. Because the devil is primarily a scavenger that likes to chase other predators off their kills, it would put pressure on the population of feral predators without putting much pressure on native fauna.

Kangaroo Island provides another example of the Australian ecosystem’s ability to take care of itself. Unlike mainland Australia, Kangaroo Island has no rabbits. Although they were introduced in the past, they were eaten to extinction by the rosenberg goanna. The goanna does not exist in high concentrations on the mainland due to the ripping of rabbit warrens that it shelters in, predation from foxes, and human initiated burning regimes that destroy its habitat. Goannas are also likely to suffer from myxomatosis outbreaks decimating rabbit populations and they may eat 1080 poisons left for foxes. In a nutshell, goanna's are indirectly killed off by the environmental protection policies of government-funded ecologists and landcare managers.

Fortunately, the defective thinking of environmentalists is not uniform.Some scientists have shown that they are prepared to sacrifice monetary gain, have an ability to think holistically, and would prefer for the ecosystem to take care of itself instead of always being protected with the human hand. One such scientist is Professor Chris Johnson, from James Cook University. Johnson has argued in favour of reintroducing dingos, quolls and the devils to the various mainland ecosystems that humans have eradicated them from. Professor Johnson has stressed that native predator communities need to be rebuilt as they have the ability to remain in balance with native prey. As native predators replace the feral predators, or reduce their numbers, native prey is able to rebound.

Johnson's ideology is a step away from the paternalist ideology that governs mainstream environmental science. It is an ideology that tries to make the ecosystem capable of finding a balance with itself without the need for humans needing to serve the role of a prison warden.

Even though it does away with the need for human management, Johnson's approach still has scope for environmentalists to make money. From a pragmatic perspective, no environmental solution will ever work unless someone can make money. The land managers currently shooting, using 1080 poison, and burning the bush will continue their environmentally destructive ways until they can be given an alternative job. Breeding native predators, and repopulating them in ecosystems they have been removed from, would be an industry that could provide these people with jobs.

Case study 5 - Fuel reduction burning

Bushfires are to Australians what earthquakes are to the Japanese. They are simply a fact of life and a threat to be endured. Despite taking a lot of lives and doing untold economical damage, something positive does come out of them. In disaster, communities are drawn together and some of the best aspects of the human character, such as helping others, are brought to the surface.

Although bushfires are a hazard of living in Australia, they really don’t need to be. The economic and human cost of bushfires has been made much worse by a belief that bushfires can be controlled if the bush is burnt off every few years. The futility of fuel-reducing “cold burns”  was shown in the 2009 Victorian firestorm. An estimated 100 lives were lost when the town of Marysville went up in flames. Controlled burns had been used to reduce fuel loads around the town in 81, 82, 85, 87, 99, 04, 05 and 08. The fuel reducing strategies did very little. Even clear felling did little. Flames jumped 150-meter wide fire breaks as well as major highways on their way to the town.

Admittedly, had there been less fuel in the national parks, then there would have been less heat. Ironically, in some ecosystems, cold burns can increase susceptibility to fire. When the ecosystem is not burnt, the thicker canopy results in less sunlight drying out the ground, more moisture being trapped in mulch, more decomposition, and less fuel ready to go up in flames. When it is burnt; however, moisture is lost from the ecosystem, and with less foliage cover, very little decomposition occurs. A tree that might have decomposed in a thick bush might just sit as a potential fire hazard in bush that has been subjected to a cold burn. Likewise, a mulch cover of leaves is more likely to break down instead of sitting for years as potential fuel.

The alternative to cold burns is to plant northern hemipshere trees that don't burn and which have lush leaves that are eaten by animals or decompose quickly. Such an action would represent a human input into the ecosystem, much like a cold burn. While aesthetic reasons would dissaude humans from planting such trees in a national park, around urban areas they would decrease the risk of bushfires destroying houses.

 

 

Cold burns - towards collapse

The aftermath of an ecosystem that has been repeatedly subjected to "cold burns" (human initiated burning.) Some of the tussocks have been burnt one too many times, and have died. Decaying plant matter has been burnt, and much of the ash has washed away. The top soil is only a few millimeters thick. The ground is rock hard, and relatively exposed to the scorching sun. Rain falls on the rock hard earth, flows away or quickly evaporates. With few low level bushes, very little moisture is trapped in the ecosystem and the decomposition process is very slow.

Cold burn - Build up of fuel after a bushfire

With little decompsition, all the leaves and sticks from the euclaypts fall, are dried and sit as fuel for a potential bushfire. Even if the dead foliage could be completley removed, the oil rich leaves would always ready to go up in flames. The only real solution is to replace natives plants with lush foreign varieties that are eaten by Australian animals and/or decompose quickly. Like a "cold burn", the introduction of foreign species would represent human interference in the ecosystem.

 

1)http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/nt_report/ntreport07/chapter12.html

2)http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AboriginalLB/1992/31.html

3) http://www.clivehamilton.net.au/cms/media/documents/articles/Cashing_in_on_Koalas.pdf

4)http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/20-years-left-mammals-plunge-into-extinction-20100901-14nmz.html